So we are doing major network changes at work and I notified everyone who's name was tied to the things we needed to change.

2 months later (this morning) I get an irate email from a professor who is all bent out of shape because he wasn't told about the changes. I look at my email history, and I see that i have notified his TA (because TA's name was the only name tied to the thing we had to change) about the changes, but received no reply. So i write to the prof. and forward him the email that I sent to his TA.
Prof. forwards it to the TA, asking if he knows anything about it.

TA writes back saying that he has never received anything from us and this is the first time he heard about the changes, or he would've replied because he knows how important it is.

Since I am in charge of running mail servers here, my natural reaction is to check the log files on the mail server to see why he hasn't received my message.... I check the logs, and it shows that my message has been successfully delivered AND read by the TA on the same day i sent it.

I let the TA know (out of band, not to get him into trouble with the prof.) that I can see successful delivery of the message right into his inbox and the server logs show that he has also read it.

This ass writes back and accuses me of being creepy. What the fuck? Does anyone else think that I was being creepy?

As I mentioned in another thread about employers monitoring people, we, sysadmins, know everything that you do on our network, but it does not mean we look at it, until you do something very very stupid.... like falsely accuse us of not doing our jobs....

It was simply a kneejerk 'not my fault reaction'. Certainly not creepy and pretty much expected.

It's hilarious the evolution of computers. It went from people being able to bullshit excuses, because nobody knew enough to argue with it (i.e. it took me DAYS to receive that email!). To now there's more than enough technologically savy people that can and will call out your BS.

Well done sir, i'd definitely pass that one on to the prof....but that's me

If he would have manned up and said I did read it.. I totally forgot. I will handle this. Then he would deserve some sympathy. Instead he chooses to deflect and give you shit. I say burn his ass to the ground... I fucking hated TAs. Overachieving, kiss ass, prick pieces of garbage....

and I KNOW garbage...

__________________

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
-André Gide

Does he know how easy it is to forward that email to the professor? Followed by a very nice comment along the lines of.. this is the type of person who runs your class when you are busy.

I believe not. Computer Science students generally suffer from a complete lack of general understanding of computer functionality. They are pretty good with theory, i guess, but they can't figure out how to use email to save their lives...

And I am being serious. We get support requests from CS students who can't figure out how to login into Gmail

I believe not. Computer Science students generally suffer from a complete lack of general understanding of computer functionality. They are pretty good with theory, i guess, but they can't figure out how to use email to save their lives...

And I am being serious. We get support requests from CS students who can't figure out how to login into Gmail

Fuck him. Creepy? He lied to save his own ass. You chose to be a nice guy and tell him that you have proof that he read the email before telling the teacher this. Instead, he goes off on you?

Does he know how easy it is to forward that email to the professor? Followed by a very nice comment along the lines of.. this is the type of person who runs your class when you are busy.

+ 1002834

TA was in the wrong. OP, you just did your job. TA claimed something and you went to verify like you're paid to. If there was an issue, I'm sure you would have wanted to know why so you can fix the problem. You did your due diligence (even went above what was needed by alerting TA), and now owe the TA nothing.

I work in accounting for a hotel and we will sometimes get guests who claim that they never booked with us or booked at a different rate. When we show them proof that they received a confirmation email and read it at XX:XX they shut up pretty quickly haha

i spoke to my co-workers about it at lunch, and their sentiment is the same - burn him.
my boss, on the other hand, is much more level-headed and he suggested that i just let it go, at least for now, because the consolidation project we are doing is a VERY touchy subject and VERY political and this TA, in addition to being a smart-ass little bitch, is one of the most vocal opponents of what we do.

i'll get back at this shit one way or another, but now now...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Freakazoid

wait this was a CS TA?

yep. majority of the "problematic" users we have are from CS department, because they are convinced that they know everything about computers.

i spoke to my co-workers about it at lunch, and their sentiment is the same - burn him.
my boss, on the other hand, is much more level-headed and he suggested that i just let it go, at least for now, because the consolidation project we are doing is a VERY touchy subject and VERY political and this TA, in addition to being a smart-ass little bitch, is one of the most vocal opponents of what we do.

i'll get back at this shit one way or another, but now now...

Umm... I mean. Very confused. He took a shot at you. You have a killing blow opportunity and your boss doesn't want to take it?

Looks as if this piece of shit was trying to make you guys look bad because of his stance against your project. If you don't take this opportunity, how do you know you will get another chance like this?

imho, Your boss sounds like a vagina. No offense.

__________________

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
-André Gide

lol. don't get me started on this. i came from the "real world", and usually shoot from the hip and take no shit. here, in academia, faculty is the king.
one vocal asshole can do a whole lot of damage, and the amount of politics involved is probably larger than in Washington D.C.! This clipped my wings a bit...

Monitor his ip and log how much porn he watches or how many DVDs he steals. Then repot it. Problem solved.

Exactly, mention to the TA that you were simply verifying that you were doing your job and that we should all hold ourselves accountable. Then say "Creepy would be monitoring your internet activity seeing that you visited the following porn sites...".

Exactly, mention to the TA that you were simply verifying that you were doing your job and that we should all hold ourselves accountable. Then say "Creepy would be monitoring your internet activity seeing that you visited the following porn sites...".

I can totally relate to the OP. I'm an IT consultant and my current client is backward as fawk, I was brought in by the CIO to shake things up a bit and try to move them firmly into the 90's (his quote). Anyhow the manager I work for keeps these two other firms on retainer to do special projects for him IE clean up the crap he does not understand and refuses to be accountable for. Anyhow we have a feed into a data warehouse that is screwing up data aud since the primary users are comfortable with me he asked me to look into it, turns out an SQL script created by one of his retainers is wrong. I simply state that hey the problem lies in this SQL script this line code this column etc.. Now I have it locked on the editor on my screen when I send the email copying the retainer but never saying anything bad just whats wrong. What do you know my session is cancelled by the time I restart the session the script is locked and then changed and the retainer replies I believe you are mistaken and looking at an old copy here is the current source and it's now right. I just let it go based on the food chain but I do have a copy of the old one with timestamps showing when it was copied by me and timestamps of the new version. The retainer ever says anything nasty to me and they get the Godzilla blast from me. OP just keep the info you got(log files) never know when you'll need to make a case for yourself. TA's are just Prof's with a bad attitude. Do you work at UCSD or what university if you don't mind me asking? My sister went to med school there, I went to SDSU as I partied way too much in high school to even come close to admission standards even in the 70's.

lol. don't get me started on this. i came from the "real world", and usually shoot from the hip and take no shit. here, in academia, faculty is the king.
one vocal asshole can do a whole lot of damage, and the amount of politics involved is probably larger than in Washington D.C.! This clipped my wings a bit...

I agree with nycgp.

At the same time, don't feel so bad, you'll have another opportunity to get back at him. He's earned a spot on your shit list and you monitor his traffic. I'd be more surprised if you don't stumble onto another opportunity for justice. Now it's really more a question of how/when are you going to get him back.